Principle 6 Pleasure – Week 2 – 2023
June 8, 2023
Principle 6. Pleasure. Second Week.
If you pursue pleasure, you enchain yourself to suffering. But as long as you do not harm your health, enjoy without inhibition when the opportunity presents itself.
Last time: How to Have Your Cake and Eat It Too.
This Time: To Eat or Not to Eat.
Perhaps after meditating on these general aspects of the principle, you can provide us with a new version of the principle, or some aspect of it, and give it a name that captures its essence. How about a very short story, saying, images, or jokes etc that illustrate some aspect of the principle.
For example:
The Principle of No Clutter
It says:
This is not a rule: Ask yourself: whose rules am I obeying and why? Don’t make unnecessary rules for yourself.
This Week:
This week we will focus on how we applied, or could have applied, this principle in the past.
One simple way to get started is to recall 2 or 3 examples of when you did (or didn’t) apply the principle and the consequences that followed. Personally, I don’t have any difficulty in coming up with any number of examples where my pursuit of (what I imagined would bring me pleasure) left me stuck with disappointment, disillusionment, or unwanted consequences. You?
And what about the second part of the principle that reminds us to enjoy without inhibition when the opportunity presents itself?
General Considerations and Personal Reflections:
Here are some personal reflections. I offer them in the spirit of dialogue and exchange, and look forward to hearing your thoughts about, and experiences with, this principle.
The more I work with the principles the more I’m struck by just what a rich resource they are. One thing that has become increasingly clear to me is the benefit of looking at the principles as riddles, or clues to a puzzle, rather than morals or rules. This approach leads to a dynamic meditation which, I believe, can help us construct a style of life that embodies a very particular mental direction.
This month’s principle provides us with a wonderful opportunity to consider once again how the principles need to be understood as a whole.
We are currently considering the pursuit of pleasure and its consequences, next month will widen it beyond pleasure to the pursuit of any end. For now, we consider how we can approach the pleasures we desire in a liberating and satisfying way — restricting ourselves in the most minimal fashion possible (i.e., “If you do not harm your health enjoy without inhibition”). Later we’ll take a broader approach to what actions are “allowed” (e.g., “If you do not harm anyone you may freely do whatever you like”). And we’ll discover a way to advance on our goals without pursuing them and without enchainment (“If everything you do is realized as an end in itself you liberate yourself”). For this week we will keep a narrower focus, even though (as always) that means we will be left with further questions to explore.
On a previous occasion I was asked why I thought that “pursuing pleasure would enchain me to suffering”. It struck me at the time as a very good question, and it still does. After all, isn’t one of the most basic facts about all living beings, that we move away from pain and toward pleasure. That seems to be a matter of definition. And why shouldn’t we obtain pleasure and avoid pain. It seems like a great idea. In mulling over the principle, I couldn’t help but note that that the principle isn’t saying that pleasure is bad or to be avoided. Nor is the principle focused on the value of the pleasure I’m pursuing. It doesn’t say you “are allowed” these pleasures but not those, except to say, “If you do not harm your health enjoy without inhibition…” Later in the next principles it will add further clarification about this point. But for now, this principle puts the focus more on the approach we take in regard to pleasure, that is on the pursuit, rather than on the object of our desire. So here it seems it’s not a matter of what turns you on but on how you relate to that pleasure.
Some philosophers call it the paradox of hedonism which Wikipedia explains this way: “…constant pleasure-seeking may not yield the most actual pleasure or happiness in the long run—or even in the short run, when consciously pursuing pleasure interferes with experiencing it.” (Paradox of hedonism - Wikipedia).
Here’s Victor Frankl’s take on this idea from his book Man’s Search for Meaning:
“Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself.”
A well-known example is how the more someone tries to demonstrate their sexual potency or ability to experience orgasm, the less they are able to succeed. Pleasure is, and must remain, a side-effect or by-product, and is destroyed and spoiled to the degree to which it is made a goal in itself.
And here’s my take: In practice, we seem to confuse pleasure and happiness (and desire and fulfillment, and pain and suffering, etc).
According to merriam-webster.com pur·sued pur·su·ing
Full Definition of PURSUE transitive verb
1: to follow in order to overtake, capture, kill, or defeat
2: to find or employ measures to obtain or accomplish: seek <pursue a goal>
I think we can agree that to pursue something is not to encounter it, or enjoy it, but to have it as something to be obtained or accomplished. It is in front of me, as something to be reached, something that calls me or drives me or demands my attention. Almost by definition I’m locked into, dependent on or, enchained to it. If I don’t get it I’ll be unhappy, or at best disappointed. My expectation is that if I reach the object of my desire, I’ll be happy or at least satisfied. But is that what happens? Certainly not in my experience. Consider this an invitation to compare it to your own.
When I think about the desires I've pursued it’s pretty clear to me that either my attempt to attain what I sought is frustrated, or I attain it and find myself dissatisfied and stuck with the consequences. Think of that tempting cake from last week’s story (or the ice cream, or whatever it is that entices you). The problem isn’t eating it, or not; it seems to me that the point is that my internal state is enchained to a cake! It feels very different when I “enjoy without inhibition when the opportunity presents itself.”
Don’t believe me? The experiment is easy to do. Put it to the test in your daily life. Personally, I’d say that the results of my almost 50-year experiment is that it has proven true in the most wonderful and unexpected ways.
Remember:
Over time the attempt to use the principles as an ongoing meditation in daily life will give all my activities a particular tone, mood, and mental direction. The importance of this cannot be overstated.
Worth Repeating:
We aim to neither pursue nor reject pleasure but to enjoy it when it’s there to enjoy.
Coming up:
This document is meant as a support for our practice of focusing on one of the 12 Principles of Valid Action each month. Over the next weeks we will consider various aspects of the principle of pleasure. It is interesting to remember that the key thing about these principles, or guidelines, or however you think of them, is that they are elements that we can form into a discipline which can be practiced at every moment and in every circumstance. They are a kind of dynamic meditation. With time and application these efforts will give all my activities a particular tone, mood, and mental direction. Our goal is to weave these general ideas that you can weave together into a coherent style of life.
Next week we’ll look to continue with Principle 6, also known as the principle of pleasure. Our focus will be on our present situation in light of this principle.